Friends of ED has been releasing competently compiled web design books made with collaboration from some of the best for quite a few years now and when they offered a few books to the Flash Insider team to read I jumped at the chance. The first book I cracked open was the latest in their Essentials series, Flash 8 Essentials. The Essentials books are meant to grab current and future web designers and give them a quick dip into the latest web design software. This book was written a quick guide to Flash 8 and includes enough tutorial and code to get most designers and developers up to speed. The writing style of this book is similar to a motivational seminar on Flash. This helps the reader become extremely excited about the new version and can make you feel like you can do everything in the book.

Flash 8 Essentials has six authors, but the reader will not notice a definite change from one chapter to the next. Each author has already made a name for himself in the Flash design and development world. Two of the authors have already written a few books on this subject and one helped to create the current Developer Certification Exam.

read the rest of the review after the jump

Though the book doesn't come with a CDROM, all the referenced FLAs and samples can be found quite easily on the Friends of ED website. The screenshots within the book help to bring the content to the reader on an OS independent platform. This is good for designer like me who work with Mac for personal projects but on PC at work. If I have to reference back to the book at anytime in the future, I know it won't matter where I am or what OS I am in.

Flash 8 Essentials is divided into 10 chapters plus an appendix. The chapters take you down the road or all the new and improved features and leave you with the impress that coding will be very important for this version of Flash. The first chapter gives a quick overview of everything in the book. Each chapter after the first gives at least one concise example of a major feature and includes well-explained code and easily understood figures. Then the appendix gets into a few advanced tutorials that touch on dynamic bitmap manipulation, file uploads and more.

At the end of the book I felt ready to tackle a bunch of new projects and pondered ways to improve some old ones (I've been wanting to retackle an old Camera() based project for a while. I think most will find this a good addition to their technical bookshelf, but new Flashers will need to invest in a few other books in addition to this one as they come up to speed, including at least one Flash bible or over reaching glossary type book that explains it all. Experienced Flashers will find this to be an essential part of their library in order to transition easily to Flash 8, if they haven't already.

Now, what am I going to do with this book? If you are in the New Orleans area and come out the NOMMUG Tenth Anniversary of Flash party on Tulane's campus on August 14th, you will have a chance to win the now well-read copy I used for this review. See you there!

About this book:
Flash 8 Essentials
by Paul Barnes-Hoggett, Stephen Downs, Glen Rhodes, Craig Swann, Matt Vierman, and Todd Yard.
ISBN: 1590595327
publisher: friends of ED

Macromedia Press (specialty imprint for Peachpit Press) announced yesterday they would be releasing a full set of Studio 8 books in time in time for the September release of Studio 8. Books a ready for pre-sale now with a publish date of September 16. They have the usual set of Macromedia books covering all subjects including the training from the source books and beyond the basics hands on series plus certification study guides.

In the past I have purchased a few of these books and although the study guide was very helpful, the training from the source books needed a little work in the past. Remember these books are written before the product is ready for release and although they will bring you up to speed quickly do not expect early release texts to be the end all be all. These books are a good start for your new Studio 8 collection though.

via MacMinute

Scott Janousek wants Macromedia to start a third Flash certification track for FlashLite. He says this could help Macromedia promote FlashLite development and get more content available to mobile companies. I don't know if this third track is needed, but if Macromedia decides to follow other tech industry models then FlashLite certification may not be a bad idea. The only issue I see is test naming. I would prefer to tell people I'm Moble Flash certified rather than FlashLite certified just because the word Lite (spoken, not written) has a connotation of Basic or less than professional. Then the certification should cover more than FlashLite for phones. It would need to include development experience for Flash Player for Pocket PC and FlashCast (which has some sort of certification already, according to the comments on Janousek's site).

Slate is looking for a new web developer and after looking at the requirements I started thinking about my resume' and the fun I have explaining why I'm qualified for web work. Most web jobs (for non-design firms) seem require a "Bachelor's degree in computer science or comparable experience or certification." This makes my degree in Art fun to explain come interview time. Sure I can show off my portfolio and possibly impress with some certifications, but that computer science requirement has tripped me up in the past when interviewing with companies that have no web department and don't really know what they want.

How do you explain a bachelor's degree in art? Some university art departments have started reformulating their graphic design curriculum to reflect changes and new web trends. My school's art department added a Digital or New Media emphasis to the degree options. I was able to take classes in design with a computer edge to them and take regular art courses at the same time in order to learn other elements of design. Now I can apply my printmaking class work to Flash based design and develop sites with a hard edge. I just wonder if my traditional media art portfolio can be used to get a job the same way my computer science classes can.

What degree do you have? Do you need a computer science degree or just a computer science minor? I found taking a discrete math course and the first two computer science courses were enough to gain a coding background to support an ActionScript back end while my art classes gave me the knowledge to organize my projects on the visual front end.

image via PhysicsWeb

edit: This isn't meant as a jab at Slate only as commentary on my interview experiences straight out of college when my portfolio was small and an interviewer gave me the brush off after hearing what I had a degree in.

With all the talk about Maelstrom (Flash player 8) beta and the coming 8Ball (Flash 8, rumored to arrive late September to early October - right before MAX) is it a good idea to go ahead and get certified as an official Flash MX 2004 Designer or Developer? I have been considering certification for quite a while, but I have never had the extra hundred and fifty bucks to grab another piece of paper that my job may not give me a raise for. My resume' would love the extra weight though.

I may have the money to get the certification soon and I see that you can get a certification discount on an upgrade from MX to MX2004, but should I? Would you? Is certification even worth it? I've met plenty of MCSE's that didn't know where the Start menu was so I have a pretty low regard for the certification track. Experience trumps paper, but isn't experience plus paper the best bet?

Of course everything will change very soon, so maybe I should just wait for 8Ball.